We already isolate antimatter as best as we can. No reason to think that there is a pretend material out there that can suspend, stabiliy, anti-matter, in such a way that it can reacte on a very efficient level with matter and make energy.
Why would I assume any other way.
Edit - You do see that the dilithium does not react when exposed to a big electro magnetic filed.
Why not skip that entire process and convert matter into energy with the transporter?
But why do you think it would be so absurdly complex that it makes humans look like salt in comparison? It could be some sort of 4D fractal structure that produces strings of pseudomagnetic fields to channel antimatter through it to various points in a highly complex but predictable sequence.
That wouldn't even make the top fifty weirdest things they ever found.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
One would think. But the 'fact' that dilithium can be made nonreactive to antimatter...this is an exception to a very fundamental reaction. This might suggest that, perhaps at a very fundamental level, dilithium is not like the matter making up our bodies. Yes, the human body is more complex, but that's a difference of degree, whereas dilithium may be a difference of kind.
What he said.
Open Powerset Conundrum (favorite comics version: if the Power Cosmic can do virtually anything, why does the Silver Surfer tumble like a girlie man everytime he's knocked off his blinkin' board? At least hover, dammit).
I used to wonder why transporters/replicators were not part of special weapons and tactics.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Last edited by Mindship on Jun 24th, 2009 at 01:20 AM
Still, much more predictable than the super nova leftovers found in every human body.
One element versus many.
Much less math involved...espcially considering the computers are powerful enough to decontruct entire humans, move them many thousands of miles, and materialize them....in mere seconds.
I started wondering in the episode where Picard uses the transporter code that makes the target explode. Actually the first thing I did was wonder why anyone would make it so easy for the transporter to do that.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Why? The transporter technology is the one that DOES read and rebuild at the quantum level.
If you meant replicators, Star Fleet doesn't have replicators that can make live organisms (that's why they always have real gagh for their klingon guests as replicated or dead gagh is considered an insult) Although some species do have replicators that can create life.
The reason given is that a fully quantum replicator would require stored data in memory of everything it needs to replicate as a quantum level and apparently there isn't enough memory available. Either that or they'd need to store a physical copy of everything on the ship so it could be scanned and then replicated at the quantum level.
They do have industrial sized replicators that can replicate large pieces of ships and regularly replace parts using replicator technology.
Transporters work on the quantum level to explain a real life problem in ever creating transporter technology called the Heisenburg uncertainty principle. Meaning that, at the quantum level, sub-atomic structures have properties that the more you measure 1 with precision, the less you can measure the other. Position and momentum of electrons are 2 such pairs of properties...if you know the exact location of an electron in an outer shell (as if it's stopped completely) then you cannot know the momentum as it wouldn't be moving. Same with the spin of electrons. Electrons always pair up in the shells of atoms and in those pairs 1 is always spinning clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. If you were to know their exact location in the shell at any given moment then you wouldn't know their spin properties.
This means that any attempt to read exactly, all the properties of an organism is impossible although star trek gets around these problems with an unexplained technology called "heisenberg compensators"
A reason it still might not work if quantum level replicators were used are similar to those i've mentioned (movement of electrons between shells, radioactive nuclei).
Transporters were only ever used on the original series because the budget didn't allow for a the special effects team to make it look like the ship or shuttles were landing on a planet every episode.
If there were fluctuations due to the uncertainty principle...that's why I said, "then" to start my sentence off.
Since we don't experience hardly any fluctuations in reassembly, we don't have to worry about that.
I didn't.
Nah. Tricorder's have more computing power than half of the computers on the earth, combined.
A large console in the transporter room could be all "enclosed" in the wall with a replicator...also, considering there is a central database for the replicator, not much computing power is needed, relative to the already available MASSIVE computing power of the main computer. To think that their computers have to be discrete calculating units would be ridiculous...don't you think?
I know this.
I learned this at 10.
I know this.
No. It's a stetch. 200 years is more than enough time to get it right. It just doesn't make the plot work right.
How many episodes would have failed if they had a "transporter-level" replicator?
He used it. He liked it. The end. The reasons behind it are unnecessary in the face of that.
No I don't think, given that at the quantum level objects are hugely more complex than at the molecular level as you would need to know the location of every electron. It's spin and momentum and calculate this for every single atom and every single nuclei. To replicate at the molecular level, you only need to know the structure of 1 molecule and multiply it up to set shapes
There's no reason to assume that "the computing power is simply not there", because it is, in spades. They were able to do it on computers 200 years before the late 24th century, so why would you assume that the computing power wouldn't exist that far in the future?
That was a gross under-exaggeration, on my part, as it would actually be much greater than all of the Earth's computers, combined.
And, I sure hope you're joking about proof. Watch the shows. There's your proof.
A built in universal translator....holograhic displays, the ability to interface with other computers, both starfleet and non-starfleet.
Then measuring and calculation temporal distortions. That alone would be vastly superior to anything that can be done with current technologies.
Then there's the loose definition of "moore's law.
Voyager's computers were at 575000 exaflops. Scale that with hand-held devices today and see if it holds to the loose definition of moore's law.
Since Tricorders were very advanced devices...top of the line, usually, we can assume they would be similar to our "iPhones", relative to our server side systems.
If you would like to prove me wrong, you can do so with what I have provided and a little research.
Edit- How it works now, in 20 years, our handheld devices will be vastly superior to our top of the line, home PCs.
You only wish. It was probably closer to 9 than 10, actually. I could recite Planck's constant and the first 20 digits of pi when I was a we laddy. I think you're underestimating what a true nerd is capable of. Most college graduates don't even know what Planck's constant was used for, much less what it was.
But, be real. Uncertainty principle is one of the "simpler" concepts of quantum physics.
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Last edited by dadudemon on Jun 25th, 2009 at 08:49 PM
So, you're implying that I didn't understand it? If you are, then that's rather insulting of you to say. Yes. I feel insulted from someone on internet...probably because I think highly of you...you big meanie head.
I'm implying that unless you managed to take several years of graduate level physics before the age of ten you wouldn't even have had access to the needed information. Perhaps you're a walking intellectual singularity, but I think it's more likely we have different scales of what it means to "really" understand something. Like could you have derived the plank equations at 10?
I was probably aware of the uncertainty principle and some of it's implications when I was ten but I wouldn't say that I understood it, I wouldn't even say that of myself today.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
All the talk is moot since, like I said before, anything that doesn't make sense can be explained away by 'We don't have a great enough understanding about science.' Compare us to ourselves three hundred years ago, for example. The leaps are amazing and we were wrong about so many things. So why even try to analyze this? Just accept the show as is.
__________________ In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England 's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words during an interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said:
"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... And how many want out."
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